“The secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter.”

You run risks. That’s the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny’s whims.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

Every hundred feet the world changes.

We’re artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don’t we?

In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

I’d obviously never heard of the group, but my ignorance in literary matters is to blame for that (every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me).

Only in chaos are we conceivable.

Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions.

we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.

The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That is our fortune.

Reading is more important than writing.

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it’s so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.

Nothing is ever behind us.

When you die of sorrow it’s as if you’ve broken all the bones in your body, bruised yourself all over, cracked your skull. That’s sorrow.

I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

I was known around the college for jamming in the lounge.

There was a lot of playing going on, and the New Yorkers, of course, were a completely different crowd from what I’d known.

The most that any of us know, is the least of that which is to be known.

I’m not from a particularly sci-fi background. I’m not anti sci-fi at all, but I’ve never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.

All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them.

We didn’t know it was simpler, did we? Those days of sunburnt youth and carefree adventure. Knowing that indestructible optimism would waver with experience – would I have gripped it a little tighter? Held on a little longer?

He’s very, very well-known. I’d say he’s world-famous in Melbourne.